Narrative Nonfiction: 3 Amazing Books

Great narrative nonfiction sweeps a reader into a world, a time, a life or a place. The subject can be exotic or prosaic, it almost doesn’t matter – it’s the “Four ‘I’s that define such writing and compel you to read on: immersion, immediacy, insight and "inside-ness."

Hear the cartilage cracking in the back of an aging athlete stretched out on the ground before a hushed crowd, as player and spectators try to coax one more flash of brilliance out of a stiff and weary body. Feel the mixture of exultation and horror as brilliant, driven minds give birth at once to the most creative and destructive of modern inventions, the computer and the H-Bomb. Rail at the senseless loss of a child’s life in a country so foreign and different that it had always eluded your imagination and interest – until a certain book, a certain intimate, passionate narrative, sucked you into a world and changed your mind and heart.

That’s why I love the powerful genre of narrative nonfiction. Or call it literary journalism or the nonfiction novel. Pick your label, narrative nonfiction is a small, poorly defined, but inspiring bookshelf where artistic and literal truth take a walk together through great storytelling. It’s what I aspire to write and what I read with pleasure, and here are three very different examples I recommend.

Open: An Autobiography

Andre Agassi is officially the author of this brutally honest story of a life in professional tennis, but the writer was actually Pulitzer-winner J.R. Moehringer, author of The Tender Bar and (in September 2012) Sutton, who kept his name off Agassi's book because, as he puts it, the midwife doesn't go home with the baby. But he does deliver a story that grabbed me from the first lines, in which Agassi awakens on his hotel room floor in agony, unable to move, contemplating the last U.S. Open in a storied career. We learn he despises the game of tennis, and has done so from the moment his crazed father constructed a bazooka-like ball machine and aimed it like a weapon at his seven-year-old son. Yet Agassi lies there wishing that the end was not upon him. Open is a textbook on how to do narrative nonfiction right.

Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe

Who knew that my Mac Mini was a direct descendant of America's project to beat the Soviets to the hydrogen bomb? And who better to tell the story of the birth of the digital era, of computers that were conceived because we needed to calculate terrible explosions and end-of-the-world trajectories, than George Dyson? He grew up with the Princeton University scientists who made it happen, and with a physicist father who pointed to an old fan belt on the ground and explained to his three-years-old that it was "a piece of the sun." And that made perfect sense to the boy, for this is how Dyson's mind works, and why he could write such a compellingly unsettling mix of historical nonfiction, science narrative and visionary explanation of mindful machines. Before computers learn to think, Dyson writes, they will learn to dream.

Mountains Beyond Mountains
Tracy Kidder is my hero of narrative nonfiction. His under-appreciated Among Schoolchildren sparked some of my own writing ambitions. I've read that Mountains Beyond Mountains is Kidder's favorite of his own work, the story of Dr. Paul Farmer's Herculean efforts to create a functioning health care system in rural Haiti. Kidder's portrait of the brilliant, bristly Farmer, whose inspiring, dogged selflessness somehow bridges the disparate worlds of Harvard Med and Haiti through startling selflessness, is unforgettable storytelling, which, when it comes down to it, is the highest praise I know. This book's been around for a few years, but its power and relevance have only grown, as the mission of Farmer's Partners in Health has expanded to Africa, and he is now a United Nations special envoy to Haiti.

Interested in Narrative Nonfiction? Check out these earlier posts: Getting Started: Writing Narrative Nonfiction and Why Great Research Enables Great Writing.

Why Great Research Enables Great Writing

In my last narrative nonfiction post, I suggested starting with "the big question" to form the backbone and roadmap for your story. Once you've got that, it's time to learn everything you can about the context, history, events and people that are touched by that question. The ability to weave a compelling nonfiction narrative -- recreating place and character as a novelist would do -- is limited only by the depth and breadth of the research.

If you don't have the goods in terms of research, then the most lyrical and elegant writer in the world will flop at nonfiction. Conversely, superb research will make even workmanlike, unadorned prose a compelling read.

I learned and adapted my research skills from my work in daily newspapers, but that was just a starting point. Narrative nonfiction requires digging deeper and differently:

Interviews: The primary means for recreating scenes, conversations and actions is through interviewing those who were witnessed or took part in them. These interviews have to go far beyond the usual journalistic basics (the famous "5 Ws" - who, what, where, when and why) and delve into minute details -- the weather, the driving conditions, what was in the news that day, street scenes, what people were wearing, what a character was doing or thinking not only during key events, but before and after. Was a character thinking about an argument with a spouse or complaining about the boss right before witnessing a murder? Think of what novelists can do in creating setting, character, context and background, how they can walk a character on stage with drama, detail and insightful revelations that capture readers' sympathy, interest or outrage even before the main action begins. Nonfiction writers must do the same -- and the primary tool for achieving this novelistic effect of getting inside story and character is pulling insane levels of details from interviews. And re-interviews. And interviews with multiple witnesses to the same events. Hours and hours of them.

Documents: Many subjects come with a useful paper trail. Nonfiction crime stories are particularly rife with documents: court files, transcripts, police reports and other materials often contain riveting details, including transcripts of whole conversations and interrogations. These can be used as direct source material and also to corroborate your interview subjects (or reveal their lies). And crime stories are not the only subjects that can generate legal documents. In our litigation-happy nation, virtually every topic you may want to write about ends up sooner or later in court (my books on the evolution wars, juvenile justice, life and death in a neonatal intensive care unit, the exploits of eco barons and Wal-Mart's unlikely green revolution all benefited from forays to courthouses, physical and virtual. Outside of the legal world, and depending on the nonfiction subject, there are arrays of useful documents to consider when delving into characters or events: published research, letters, speeches, corporate annual reports, resumes, newspaper clippings, school yearbooks, city council agendas, YouTube videos -- you get the idea. Regardless of your subject, there will almost always be some documentary materials related to it.

Immersion: Interviews are essential and documents can be invaluable, but there is nothing like being present for the events you’re writing about or, at the very least, becoming intimately familiar with the world and culture that your characters inhabit. Browse this magazine piece, "You Belong to Judge Dorn Now," in which I describe morning in juvenile court, drawn from my book, No Matter How Loud I Shout. No interview would ever get you this kind of immediacy, this spontaneity. You have to put in the time watching, listening, observing. Then you have to chase down the people you observed and interview them, corner them in the hallway, get their phone numbers, do the legwork. Wherever possible, I think the best nonfiction writing finds a way to be there. Immerse yourself in your subject. Wheedle your way inside.

Historical research: Every setting, event and character has a history, and it can provide a wonderful context and richness to your story. My true crime book, Mississippi Mud, was set in Biloxi, with corrupt cops and politicians as important characters/antagonists. A little digging at the local library and the historical society showed that there was a rich legacy of corruption and deception dating back centuries, that there were congressional hearings on it in the 1950s -- a fascinating history that informed the present. I looked into the history of neonatology for my book Baby ER and I found out that from 1900 through World War II, the absolute best neonatal care for premature babies anywhere in the country could be found at an exhibit on Coney Island where visitors paid a quarter apiece to see the miracle babies. Just fascinating material. Find the juicy history that informs the present in your narrative

Get Started: Writing Narrative Nonfiction

Not too long ago I was asked to lead a workshop with a daunting title: "What You Need to Know to Write Nonfiction." I've written 11 narrative nonfiction books, with number 12 (Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash) off to the copyeditor and set for publication in 2012, and I must be honest here: I’m still trying to figure out just what I need to know to write nonfiction.

The Big Question: For me, the starting place for any narrative long or short is not what I should know, but what I don't know. That’s what drives the story forward: that tantalizing question about a murder trial, or that biographical subject, or that disaster, or that burning public policy dilemma. Why do writers write about a certain topic, why are we passionate about a particular idea -- so passionate we'll invest weeks or months or years in it? Why does an idea, event, or character give us goose bumps, or become that mental piece of gum we just can't scrape off our shoes? Is it because we know the subject inside and out? No, just the opposite. It's because we want to get to the bottom of something, we want to enter and explore a strange world, culture, place, or community -- and then bring readers along for the ride. That's what the narrative nonfiction writer must bring into focus before writing the first word, then keep it in focus throughout the journey.

Each of my books, all character-driven narratives, has started with and revolved around a big question. How did a former nurse take on the Dixie Mafia and solve her own parents’ murder when the police could not or would not do either? Why does juvenile court so often fail to protect kids in danger while also failing to protect the rest of us from dangerous kids? Why does the science of evolution arouse so much fear and loathing in America 80-plus years after the Scopes Monkey Trial ended? Why would a notoriously bottom-line, red-state company like Wal-Mart suddenly attempt to tackle some of our worst environmental problems?

What’s your big question? That's what you need to figure out. There will be important subsidiary questions, of course, but this first step is simply about identifying that big-picture question, the one that animates your narrative and becomes its theme and backbone. It's Tracy Kidder asking, What drives Paul Farmer to such heights of selflessness in Mountains Beyond Mountains, or Walter Isaacson asking, Who is the real Steve Jobs? Then the real work begins -- finding the new and original answers to that big question to engage a reader's (or an editor's or a publisher's) imagination, to make them feel your goose bumps, too.

Getting started: This is an exercise I use with my students (and myself): In 50 words or less, lay out your big question -- the one at the heart of the story you want to reveal. Try it.

Next Monday, Part II: How great research trumps great writing (and also enables it).